State OKs delay in voter registry program

Goal is to have all counties using system by year's end.

Preparing for a presidential election involves lots of late nights for county election board workers.

This already difficult night, many county election officials feared, might turn into chaos if the implementation of a new statewide voter registry system wasn't postponed.

The Statewide Uniform Registry of Electors system aims to create a central registry for voters across the state and reduce the number of voters who may have moved and not had their names removed from registration rolls.

But some counties using the system have complained that it's too slow and hasn't been properly tested with all 67 counties using it. As a result, some counties have been granted a reprieve from using the system for this year's general election.

Those counties are Montgomery, Northampton, Chester, Delaware, Lancaster, Philadelphia, Schuylkill and York, said Brian McDonald, a spokesman for Pennsylvania's Department of State.

The goal is to have all counties using the system before the end of this year, McDonald said.

Last week, Montgomery County received notification that it won't have to use the system. County officials were concerned with the state's goal to use the system for the April 27 Pennsylvania presidential primary, said Joseph Passerella, county director of voter services.

"The presidential primary is just a primary, but it's still not the time to be a testing ground for this system," he said. "It just hasn't been tested with all the counties on board, and those that are using it have major concerns about it."

The main concern with the system is the speed it takes to register new voters, Passerella said. Using the county's current method, it takes about a minute. Using the SURE system, it can take up to six minutes, he said.

"It's just not a user-friendly system and that needs to be addressed," Passerella said. "People are already working around the clock to prepare for the election and making things take even longer is a major concern."

Bucks County is one of 13 counties now using the SURE system for voter registration. Three weeks after the county started using the system in July 2003, problems began to surface, said Deena Dean, director of Bucks' Board of Elections and Registration Commission.

Bucks has experienced problems with long delays, a backlog of voter applications and difficulties maintaining voter history records, she said.

This week, officials in Lehigh County are preparing to use the SURE system for the primary, said Betty Hillwig, director of voter registration and elections.

"We're trying to pull it together, but it's difficult when the old system we used was so efficient," she said. "We're really straining to learn things here and it can be frustrating and difficult."

Northampton County Chief Registrar Linda Arcury also complained about the system in September, saying it was slapped together.

In 2002, state and federal law mandated a central registry for all state voters. The $19.5 million contract for Pennsylvania was awarded to Accenture Ltd., based in New York, to create and maintain the system.

A delay in using the system was granted on a case-by-case basis for individual counties, McDonald said.

"Some counties have just come to us and said they felt like they wanted to wait and we allowed them to do that," he said. "Once all the bugs are worked out and all the counties are on the system, there's no argument that it will be a huge asset to the state."

In January, Pedro A. Cortes, state secretary of the commonwealth, announced the state was pushing back the deadline for the system, initially scheduled for the primary elections.

A $78,000 independent review of the system, completed by InfoSentry Service Inc. of North Carolina, said the state's original schedule was too aggressive and "introduces an even greater risk of failure into the SURE project."

McDonald said some changes have already been made with the way the system and software is maintained.

"We are trying to work with them and really take a look at the issues to decide whether we can make this happen, or if it's better to just postpone things," he said.